Mrs. Morton had gone to town with Dick and Alice for the day or the girls would probably not have been permitted to carry out their unusual undertaking. They quickly made their preparations with much joking about the boots, and twenty minutes later came to the banks of the slough. The slough was in reality a continuation of the spring stream, which spread out in the meadows below the pond until it lost all semblance of a stream and became merely a marshy stretch, whose waters finally found their way into the creek. In the meadows adjoining, the finest hay on the place was cut each year. The girls sat down on the grass and fastened on the boots. The effect was somewhat startling, for they reached well above the knee on Chicken Little, who was the tallest of the three, while poor Gertie seemed to be divided into two equal parts. Both Katy and Jane giggled when she got laboriously to her feet. "There's more boots than girl, Gertie," laughed Jane. "You don't need to be afraid, Sis, you'll scare anything, even a snake!" Katy remarked unfeelingly, though her words reassured Gertie wonderfully. "I don't feel so afraid in these," she said. Chicken Little was slowly making her way in to the slough. "Jim found the mother pig near here, Ernest said, but the little scamps may be most anywhere. Let's listen and see if we can hear any squeals or grunts." "Yes, I did--I'm most sure, but it didn't sound very close by," Gertie answered. Chicken Little listened. "Which way did the sound come from?" "Toward the creek, but I don't hear it any more." [Illustration: They had a pretty chase.] "We'd better search pretty carefully as we go along so we won't have to come back over the same ground," remarked Katy, who had a genius for organizing--even a pig hunt. "You are the tallest, Jane, so you take the tallest grass next the water, and I'll come along half way up the bank and Gertie can walk through the meadow grass--that way we can't miss them." "No, for they must be on this side of the slough: they're too little to wade across it." Chicken Little made the first find, two discouraged little porkers, hopelessly mired and grunting feebly when disturbed. They had no trouble in catching these, but holding their wet, miry little bodies was a different matter. They were slippery as eels. Chicken Little and Katy, who each had one, found them a handful. "Oh, mine most got away! And I'm all over mud--we'll be a sight!" Katy giggled hysterically. "I wonder what mother would think if she could see me now." "Well, it will all wash off. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so hard to clump along in these old boots. It takes forever to get any place."